Cloudflare vs Coolify Comparison
Compare Cloudflare vs Coolify features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Cloudflare
7.6/10
Cloudflare is a global edge network. It offers CDN, DNS, DDoS protection and a WAF, plus serverless compute and storage (Workers, R2, D1) for developers and businesses.
Coolify
5.9/10
Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable platform that deploys apps, databases and services onto servers you own. It is aimed at developers who want a self-run alternative to Heroku or Vercel.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.6/10 | 5.9/10 |
| Integration | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 4/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 9/10 | 10/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 5/10 |
| Reliability | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Scalability | 9/10 | 4/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $5/mo Workers Paid | $5/mo Cloud |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free | Free Self-hosted |
| Features | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Serverless Functions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Cloudflare vs Coolify cost by team size
Cloudflare and Coolify cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudflare | Coolify |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 5 users | FreeFree | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 10 users | FreeFree | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 25 users | FreeFree | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 50 users | FreeFree | FreeSelf-hosted |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Cloudflare
- Higher Scalability score (9/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Security score (9/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for enterprise (8/10 vs 3/10)
- Includes Content Delivery Network, which Coolify lacks
Why choose Coolify
- Higher Cost score (10/10 vs 9/10)
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 8/10)
Pros & Cons
Cloudflare
Pros
- The free plan includes unmetered DDoS protection, a CDN, a WAF and universal SSL.
- R2 object storage charges no egress fees.
- Workers has very low entry pricing: a $5 monthly minimum and $0.30 per additional million requests.
- The Business plan adds a 100 percent uptime SLA and PCI DSS compliance for $200 a month billed annually.
Cons
- Reviewers report slow support on Free and Pro, which have no chat or phone support.
- Global outages in November and December 2025 disrupted many sites at the same time.
- Reviewers report billing problems, such as charges after cancelling add-ons.
- It offers no traditional shared hosting, VPS or dedicated servers, so you still need an origin host for conventional workloads.
Coolify
Pros
- The self-hosted edition is free with no feature limits, so the only cost is the VPS.
- Git push deploys, pull request previews and one-click rollback give a Vercel-like workflow on your own servers.
- A catalog of more than 280 one-click service templates plus managed provisioning for Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB.
- No vendor lock-in, because apps run as standard Docker containers on servers you control.
- Coolify Cloud is cheap, at $5 per month for two servers, for teams that do not want to host the control panel themselves.
Cons
- You are responsible for OS patching, disk space, security updates and checking that backups restore.
- No auto-scaling, so capacity has to be added by hand.
- No built-in CDN, and application volume backups require manual snapshots.
- Only admin and member roles, which is too coarse for larger or regulated teams.
- Reviewers report thin documentation for advanced setups and occasional proxy problems that need manual fixes.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudflare scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.6/10 against 5.9/10 for Coolify. The largest gap is in Scalability: 9/10 for Cloudflare and 4/10 for Coolify.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Cloudflare and Coolify have a free plan.
Cloudflare is the better fit for enterprise: we rate it 8/10 for them, against 3/10 for Coolify.
Cloudflare has Content Delivery Network, which Coolify lacks.
